Why We Need Better Representation of Asian Women (Explained in Terms of Harry Potter!)

November 9, 2014 / Rachel Rostad

Video courtesy of Button Poetry. For more amazing spoken word performances, check them out on YouTube and Facebook.

You’ve seen the stereotype before: Asian woman falls in love with white hero and then cries when he inevitably leaves her. Asian women as a tragic fetish. It’s one of the most tired tropes around Asian women in our media and, yes, even extends to Harry Potter.

Check out this kickass poem by Rachel Rostad to JK Rowling on how this kind of representation is damaging and dehumanizing and why we need to do better.

Click for the Transcript

To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang

When you put me in your books, millions of Asian girls across America rejoiced! Finally, a potential Halloween costume that wasn’t a geisha or Mulan! I mean, what’s not to love about me? I’m everyone’s favorite character! I totally get to fight tons of Death Eaters and have a great sense of humor and am full of complex emotions!

Oh, wait. That’s the version of Harry Potter where I’m not fucking worthless.

First of all, you put me in Ravenclaw. Of course the only Asian at Hogwarts would be put in the nerdy house. Too bad there wasn’t a house that specialized in computers and math and karate, huh?

I know, you thought you were being tolerant. Between me, Dean, and the Indian twins, Hogwarts has like…five brown people? It doesn’t matter we’re all minor characters. Nah, you’re not racist! Just like how you’re not homophobic, because Dumbledore’s totally gay! Of course it’s never said in the books, but man. Hasn’t society come so far? Now gays don’t just have to be closeted in real life—they can even be closeted fictionally!

Ms. Rowling. Let’s talk about my name. Cho. Chang. Cho and Chang are both last names. They are both Korean last names. I am supposed to be Chinese. Me being named “Cho Chang” is like a Frenchman being named “Garcia Sanchez.” So thank you. Thank you for giving me no heritage. Thank you for giving me a name as generic as a ninja costume. As chopstick hair ornaments.

Ms. Rowling, I know you’re just the latest participant in a long tradition of turning Asian women into a tragic fetish. Madame Butterfly. Japanese woman falls in love with a white soldier, is abandoned, kills herself. Miss Saigon. Vietnamese woman falls in love with a white soldier, is abandoned, kills herself. Memoirs Of A Geisha. Lucy Liu in leather. Schoolgirl porn.

So let me cry over boys more than I speak. Let me fulfill your diversity quota. Just one more brown girl mourning her white hero.

No wonder Harry Potter’s got yellow fever. We giggle behind small hands and “no speak Engrish.” What else could a man see in me? What else could I be but what you made me? Subordinate. Submissive. Subplot.

Go ahead. Tell me I’m overreacting. Ignore the fact that your books have sold 400 million copies worldwide. I am plastered across movie screens, a bestselling caricature.

Last summer, I met a boy who spoke like rain against windows. He had his father’s blue eyes. He’d press his wrist against mine and say he was too pale. That my skin was so much more beautiful. To him, I was Pacific sunset, almond milk, a porcelain cup.

When he left me, I told myself I should have seen it coming. I wasn’t sure I was sad, but I cried anyway. Girls who look like me are supposed to cry over boys who look like him. I’d seen all the movies and read all the books. We were just following the plot.

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Rachel Rostad is a senior at Macalester College, studying English, Anthropology, and Human Rights and Humanitarianism. A two-time member of the nationally recognized Macalester College slam poetry team, she is winner of “Best Of The Rest” at college nationals. She was a semifinalist at National Poetry Slam 2013, as a member of Minneapolis’s team. That year, she also became the 19th Macalester College Cultural House Poetry Slam Champion. In 2014, she became a literature contributor for Gazillion Voices, a national adoptee magazine, and a blog writer for Hypen Magazine. Rachel is also the recipient of an Academy Of American Poets Prize for her written work, and she has been published in Cider Press Review, Chanter Literary Magazine, and Mandala Journal. Follow her on Twitter @are_why_are.